Trope Guide
Paranormal & Fantasy Lesbian Romance: 25 Books, Reviewed
Witches, necromancers, and empires among the stars — sapphic love stories set in worlds unlike our own, reviewed one by one.
The Priory of the Orange Tree
In a world facing the return of an ancient dragon threat, a queen bound by duty and a mage-in-training on opposite sides of the world find their fates — and feelings — increasingly entwined. Shannon builds a sprawling, matriarchal fantasy world where the central romance carries real weight.
A doorstop epic fantasy with a genuinely swoony sapphic core.
Gideon the Ninth
A foul-mouthed swordswoman and the necromancer heir she’s sworn to serve are flung into a deadly puzzle-box competition between noble Houses. Muir’s voice — profane, funny, and unlike anything else in fantasy — carries a genuinely aching bond underneath the chaos.
Bizarre, hilarious, and one of the most acclaimed sapphic fantasy debuts in years.
Harrow the Ninth
Muir doubles down on the structural weirdness of the first book while deepening the grief-shadowed bond between its two leads. Not an easy read, but a rewarding one.
For readers who finished Gideon and need to know what happens next.
A Memory Called Empire
A new ambassador to a sprawling galactic empire has to solve her predecessor’s murder while falling for the woman assigned to guide her through the capital’s lethal politics. Martine’s prose is as dense and rewarding as the intrigue itself.
A Hugo Award winner that pairs political thriller plotting with real romantic tension.
A Desolation Called Peace
Martine’s sequel widens the scope to a first-contact crisis while continuing the charged relationship at the heart of the first book. Just as cerebral, with even higher stakes.
A satisfying continuation for readers who loved the political ambition of the first book.
She Who Became the Sun
A peasant girl assumes her dead brother’s identity and claws her way toward the throne, locked in an escalating rivalry with a rebel general whose fate keeps tangling with hers. Parker-Chan reimagines the founding of the Ming dynasty with sweeping, morally complicated queer characters.
Epic, ruthless historical fantasy with real sapphic and queer complexity.
He Who Drowned the World
Parker-Chan’s sequel raises the stakes and the body count as its central characters’ ambitions collide with the cost of the empire they’re building. Just as unsparing as the first book.
A worthy, brutal conclusion to one of recent fantasy’s most acclaimed duologies.
The Unspoken Name
An orc priestess flees her fate and finds herself working for a wizard whose motives she can’t fully trust, in a sprawling fantasy that keeps pulling its central relationships between suspicion and loyalty. Larkwood’s worldbuilding is dense and rewarding.
Ambitious epic fantasy with real sapphic heart underneath the intrigue.
The Space Between Worlds
A woman who can travel to parallel worlds because she’s dead in most of them is drawn into an uneasy alliance — and eventual entanglement — with a woman from a more privileged version of her own life. Johnson uses the multiverse premise to interrogate class and power as much as romance.
Sharp, inventive sci-fi with a genuinely charged central relationship.
Ash
A Cinderella retelling in which the heroine finds herself caught between a fairy huntsman and the King’s Huntress, a woman who teaches her to track and hunt — and to want. Lo’s quiet, atmospheric prose reinvents the fairy tale from the inside out.
A gentle, foundational entry in sapphic YA fantasy.
Huntress
Set generations before Ash, two girls are sent on a perilous quest to save their kingdom from endless winter, and fall for each other along the way. Lo grounds the fantasy quest structure in real emotional stakes.
A quietly moving companion to Lo’s debut.
Payback’s a Witch
A reluctant witch returns home for a magical tournament and is forced to team up with the ex who broke her heart. Harper’s Witches of Thistle Grove series turned rivals-to-lovers into a full paranormal rom-com franchise.
Frothy, funny, and the gateway book into a very charming series.
From Bad to Cursed
A skeptical outsider clashes with a witch from one of the town’s ruling families before a shared curse forces them to cooperate. Harper keeps the found-family warmth of the series while raising the romantic stakes.
A worthy, funnier follow-up to the series opener.
Back in a Spell
A no-nonsense skeptic and a chaotic, spell-slinging local are thrown together by a magical mishap neither can undo alone. The series’ formula holds up well into its third entry.
Consistent, cozy paranormal rom-com from a genre favorite.
A Comedy of Curses
A competitive treasure hunt pits two witches with a prickly history against each other, with predictably swoony results. Harper closes out the Thistle Grove series without losing any of its charm.
A satisfying send-off for series fans.
Kate Kane: Paranormal Investigator
A cynical paranormal investigator keeps running into the same infuriating, magnetic supernatural figure while working a case in a very strange version of London. Hall’s trademark wit is all over this urban fantasy series.
Funny, weird, and a good pick for readers who want banter with their sapphic paranormal romance.
Wilder Girls
A mysterious illness has quarantined an island boarding school, mutating the girls trapped inside it, and the bond between two of them becomes the story’s emotional center. Power’s body horror is genuinely unsettling.
Visceral, strange, and not for the faint of heart.
Sisters of the Vast Black
A crew of nuns aboard a living, slug-like spaceship navigate faith, rebellion, and a quietly blooming relationship between two of their order. Rather’s novella-length world is strange and specific in the best way.
A short, unusual sci-fi read with real tenderness at its core.
The Traitor Baru Cormorant
An accountant-spy works her way into an empire’s inner circle while falling for a rebel duchess she may eventually have to betray. The tension between duty and desire is the entire engine of the book.
Brutal, brilliant, and not for readers who want an easy happy ending.
Girls of Paper and Fire
In a caste-divided kingdom, Lei falls for another girl trapped in the king’s court. Ngan doesn’t soften the violence of that world or the cost of desire within it.
For readers who want their sapphic fantasy to carry real moral weight.
Girls of Storm and Shadow
Ngan’s sequel follows Lei and Wren into exile and rebellion, deepening their bond even as the world around them grows more dangerous. The stakes and the romance both escalate.
A worthy continuation for readers invested in the Girls of Paper and Fire trilogy.
Girls of Fate and Fury
Ngan closes out her trilogy with the full weight of rebellion bearing down on its central couple. The series’ commitment to consequence pays off in the finale.
A satisfying, hard-won ending to one of YA fantasy’s most acclaimed sapphic trilogies.
The Deep
Based on a song by clipping., this novella imagines the descendants of pregnant African slaves thrown overboard during the Middle Passage as an underwater society, and the historian charged with remembering their trauma for everyone else. Solomon’s prose is dense, poetic, and devastating.
Short, mythic, and unlike anything else on this list.
An Unkindness of Ghosts
Aboard a rigidly stratified generation ship, a gender-nonconforming healer navigates a brutal caste system while her feelings for another woman complicate an already dangerous position. Solomon writes systemic cruelty and tenderness side by side without flinching.
Bleak, brilliant sci-fi with a genuinely moving relationship at its core.
Sawkill Girls
Girls keep disappearing on an isolated island, and three very different young women — including two who fall for each other — are the only ones who might stop it. Legrand blends horror, feminist rage, and romance into something genuinely unsettling.
Atmospheric horror with real sapphic heart underneath the scares.